The Soviet Union & the Struggle for Socialism

[The Vegan Marxist]

The Soviet Union and the struggle for socialism

Based on a talk by Fred Goldstein to the December 6–7, 2003, Workers World conference in New York

Since the theme of this conference is reviving the struggle for socialism, I would like to turn to a subject that is ideologically and politically highly essential to that effort-that is, taking back our own history from the capitalist class on the question of the Soviet Union.

The socialist movement has long been laboring under a cloud of demoralization and doubt because of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Of course, the collapse was arguably the greatest setback for the working class movement in history. The political and economic gains were enormous for world imperialism. It reaquired one sixth of the globe. It gained a free hand to make war and intensify its plunder among the oppressed countries, which used to rely on the USSR as a partial shield against imperialism. And it intensified imperialism's assault on the labor movement everywhere.

But the demoralization and weakening of the socialist movement is not confined to concern over material and political setbacks. It goes deeper than that. It is a matter of having lost confidence in the revolutionary socialist goal itself.

Much of the movement has consciously or unconsciously accepted the bourgeois interpretation of the collapse of the USSR as a proof that socialism—socialism in the communist sense of establishing the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and organizing a planned economy—is fundamentally flawed. The movement has been in a defensive posture in the face of a bourgeois ideological onslaught. It has retreated on this question in the face of a mountain of bourgeois lies and distortions. The most common response of those who do not simply jump on the bourgeois bandwagon is to remain embarrassed and silent or ambiguous and apologetic on the whole subject.

MARXIST APPROACH TO THE SOVIET UNION

Thus, this question has everything to do with the future of the movement. The question of dealing forthrightly with the collapse of the USSR from a Marxist point of view is not merely a matter of setting the historical record straight for posterity, but rather it has become a measure of the degree of confidence in Marxism, historical materialism, the doctrine of the class struggle and the outlook for the struggle for world socialism and communism. The movement must retake the initiative on this question, dispel the clouds of confusion and doubt, and renew its confidence in Marxism and especially in the teachings of Lenin, the architect of the Bolshevik Revolution.

In a talk of this length it is only possible to propose a framework for what must be a thoroughgoing discussion and analysis. So the first thing to establish is that there is not one iota of historical evidence that the collapse of the USSR represents the failure of socialism as a social system. On the contrary, the extraordinary achievements of the first victorious workers' state in history are a living demonstration of the potential of socialism to lift the world out of the morass and nightmare imposed by private property, once socialism can be built on a strong economic foundation and be freed from the destructive influences of world imperialism.

The Bolshevik Revolution took place on a foundation of poverty in the poorest capitalist country in the West. It was isolated in its poverty and backwardness once the revolutionary attempts by the European working class to seize power were crushed by the European ruling classes after World War I. Yet, amidst the devastation caused by imperialist intervention and bloody civil war, the revolution finally expropriated the means of production from the capitalists and landlords, instituted the monopoly on foreign trade and inaugurated the planned economy.

SOCIALIST ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE USSR

The revolution overcame the near-total collapse of the productive forces and raised Russia and its colonies from a semi-feudal region to the second industrial power in the world. The USSR led the world in steel and coal production. In the sphere of science and engineering, the USSR inaugurated the space age, built the largest construction projects in history, and, most importantly, from a class point of view, it did all this while lifting the peasants and workers out of poverty, bringing literacy, medicine, vacations, early retirement, and numerous other social benefits to the people.

The planned economy eliminated economic crises. Not once in its history, save during the Nazi invasion, did it suffer a decline in production. The five-year plans brought a steady growth in the economy while the capitalist world went through boom and bust, including a world depression in the 1930s. Unemployment was abolished. The present horrendous living conditions of the peoples of the former USSR are sufficient testimony to what was lost.

The revolution gave the oppressed nations who were in the tsar's “prison house of nations” the right to self- determination and created the first legislative house of nationalities in history. In its early years the Soviet government exposed the secret treaties of imperialism and called upon the oppressed peoples of the world to overthrow their colonial masters. It supported anti-imperialist governments and liberation struggles around the world and inaugurated a foreign policy of internationalism.

These accomplishments of the USSR took place in the face of a constant war by world imperialism, including intervention by 14 imperialist countries in 1918, the Nazi invasion which killed over 20 million people and wrought massive destruction on socialist industry and agriculture, and the 45-year military, economic and political Cold War by the U.S., NATO and Japanese imperialism.

RETREATS, VIOLATIONS OF SOCIALIST NORMS AND IMPERIALIST PRESSURE

To be sure, the demise of the USSR was immeasurably aided by the leadership's eventual abandonment of socialist norms and Leninist practices. The growth of excessive material privilege and social inequality under the guise of material incentives, the abandonment of revolutionary proletarian internationalism, and the use of repressive measures which went beyond the justifiable repression of the bourgeoisie and landlords to include the party and loyal communists, helped to undermine the revolutionary spirit of the workers-the fundamental asset of the revolution. The disastrous split with the People's Republic of China during the PRC's revolutionary phase, caused by the Soviet leadership and fostered by U.S. imperialism, was one of the truly historic setbacks to building a strong, united socialist camp that could hold the imperialists at bay.

But these reactionary retreats from socialist norms took place under crisis conditions imposed by imperialism and under conditions of extreme material hardship. These setbacks had nothing whatever to do with socialism and everything to do with imperialist encirclement, a world imperialist embargo on technology, and a 24-hour-a-day threat of nuclear attack during the Cold War. This permanent state of war constantly disrupted socialist construction, exacerbated social tensions, promoted bourgeois elements fearful and conciliatory to imperialism, and undermined the development of socialism in the extreme.

None of the setbacks caused by bourgeois influence can nullify or disqualify the extraordinary world-shaking achievements in production, science, economic stability, rational planning for human need while raising the material and cultural level of the workers and peasants. The great strides forward in affirmative action for formerly oppressed peoples and support for the world liberation struggle were strictly due to the establishment of the dictatorship of the working class and socialist institutions.

On balance, it was the combined forces of material insufficiency and the campaign of aggression and pressure by imperialism that were the dominant factors in the demise of the USSR, not its attempts to build socialism.
In analyzing the development of the USSR, communists should take the approach of Lenin. After the collapse of the international working class movement known as the Second International, millions of workers were pitted against each other in a great imperialist war and the bourgeoisies of all the countries were riding high. In the midst of that war, in 1916, Lenin wrote his book “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,” in which he showed that world imperialism was preparing the way for world socialism.

Lenin could do this amidst the horrendous collapse because he had a profound scientific understanding of capitalism and its historical development that led to his confidence in the decisiveness of the class struggle. Lenin viewed the immediate situation as so bleak that in January 1917 he gave a speech in Switzerland stating that he would probably not see the revolution in his lifetime. Yet he was confident in the inevitability of the revolution.

LENIN AND MARX IN FACE OF DEFEAT

Karl Marx himself never let victorious counterrevolution force him to abandon his scientific view of history, and consequently never lost faith in the struggle. After the revolution of 1848, in which he and Frederick Engels were participants, the workers in Paris were slaughtered and the Prussian and Austrian monarchies, with the aid of the Russian tsar, crushed the revolutions in their realms. Revolutionaries all over Europe were executed, jailed or exiled. By 1852, reaction reigned supreme.

But in the midst of reaction, on March 5, 1852, Marx wrote a letter to a friend in New York, Joseph Wedemeyer, in which he calmly said that “… no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. … What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of the classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.”

This was written 20 years before the Paris Commune and 65 years before the Bolsheviks established the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union.

The collapse of the USSR, as catastrophic as it was, has not changed the fact that capitalism creates its own grave diggers, the working class. A setback in the workers' struggle, no matter how bad, does not change the laws of historical development nor can it rescue capitalism from its fatal contradictions. To regard the Soviet Union as an historical anomaly would be to abandon materialism altogether. We must regard it as the first and crucial phase in the struggle for world socialism, which arose out of the fundamental contradiction between private property and socialized production.

The same forces of capitalist exploitation that drove the Russian workers to make the Bolshevik Revolution are now operative on an even broader global scale, and will eventually propel the entire working class to make the world socialist revolution and lay the basis for communism.

The achievements of the USSR in its attempts to build socialism showed that society could be planned in a rational way to meet human need and could make enormous progress without private property, without the profit motive and without bosses. In a word, when the socialist side of the USSR is separated out from the regressions induced by world capitalism, it showed that the capitalist class is historically unnecessary, parasitic and an obstruction to the progress of society.

The two fundamental impediments that distorted and strangled socialist development and brought the USSR down—the material insufficiency of the productive forces to support advanced socialist relations and the weight of world imperialism—would both be removed with the socialist revolution in the United States. It is the revolution in the developed imperialist countries that lays the basis for an era of true peace and solidarity to begin, that is, the beginning of human history.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/63/232.html

[Lolshevik]

I agree that the USSR's positive achievements are often overlooked and they certainly deserve highlighting. but the article just brushes over the bureaucratic problems that lead to the counter-revolution without really giving a satisfied explanation of them. The article gives the impression that the rise of a bureaucratic caste in the USSR was inevitable & says nothing of the attempts of the Soviet and eastern european proletariat to replace it with workers' democracy, either before or during the actual counterrevolution.

[syndicat]

well, i suppose that if one looks at things from the point of view of the bureaucratic class, one could see the USSR as some great achievement and a tragic loss, that elements of the bureaucratic exploiting class in the USSR, envious of their capitalist counterparts in Europen, wanted to pursue the capitalist path. the Russian working class suffered the conseuences. Now why is that? Why did they not fight back? Well, they had no power,they were excluded from power. the reality of the USSR as a bureaucratic class dominated mode of production is ignored by this article. and this goes back to the very beginning, as the failure of Marxism-Leninism is that it is a bureaucratic class ideology and politics.

[FSL]

Someone needs to mention the word "bureaucratic" a few more times, I've heard that after a while it magically turns into a valid argument.



I disagree with the article in its stressing of imperialist pressure -which did exist but didn't/couldn't play any real role as the cause of a counterrevolution- and in saying it was "russian poverty and backwardness" that couldn't support socialist relations of productions. Russian backwardness was done away with in a matter of years and the USSR was a rapidly growing economy, even surpassing the west in sectors of advanced technology (for example, with the invention of tokamak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak). In my opinion, it was lagging behind in further developing the relations of production -and even taking steps back like in 1965- that held back the growth of the productive forces.

When firing people became legal, essentially for the first time without the state guaranteeing that person employment, I think in 1989, the economy plunged into recession. That, along with the wannabe capitalists, the small enterpreneurs that had grown illegally, and the international base of capital that was offering "another way" made a large section of the workers indifferent or even positive to the overthrowing of the state.

[syndicat]

you think there wasn't a concentration of power and expertise into a minority, the Gosplan elite planners, the industry sector managers, admirals and generals and poitical appartichiks...okay try to make your case. The authors of "Revolution from Above" don't agree with you.

THe bureaucratic dominating and exploiting class in the USSR came directly out of Leninist practice from the earlier days, from the creation of the centralized planning via Supreme Council of National Economy (later Gosplan), appointed from above with party hacks, union bureaucrats, managers, engineers. that was in Nov 1917.

I think some MLs don't really disagree with the idea of a dominating and exploiting class, they just want to be a part of it.

[khad]

you think there wasn't a concentration of power and expertise into a minority, the Gosplan elite planners, the industry sector managers, admirals and generals and poitical appartichiks...okay try to make your case. The authors of "Revolution from Above" don't agree with you.
And why are people obligated to listen to Sovietologist hacks?


THe bureaucratic dominating and exploiting class in the USSR came directly out of Leninist practice from the earlier days, from the creation of the centralized planning via Supreme Council of National Economy (later Gosplan), appointed from above with party hacks, union bureaucrats, managers, engineers. that was in Nov 1917.

I think some MLs don't really disagree with the idea of a dominating and exploiting class, they just want to be a part of it.Even if I concede this to you (just for the sake of argument), the fact remains that the Soviet Union was the largest historical experiment in a non-capitalist economic system. The fact that they had no labor market meant that the shape of the economy was fundamentally different from any that had come before it. Workers in fact had a lot of informal leverage over the system as a result. They had to be enticed by employers with benefits because there was a high turnover rate and little incentive to keep working if dissatisfied--obviously because the state would guarantee you another job.

Just waving your hands and crying about how it's not your perfect socialism is tired and useless. There were many things the Soviet system got right.

[S.Artesian]

you think there wasn't a concentration of power and expertise into a minority, the Gosplan elite planners, the industry sector managers, admirals and generals and poitical appartichiks...okay try to make your case. The authors of "Revolution from Above" don't agree with you.

THe bureaucratic dominating and exploiting class in the USSR came directly out of Leninist practice from the earlier days, from the creation of the centralized planning via Supreme Council of National Economy (later Gosplan), appointed from above with party hacks, union bureaucrats, managers, engineers. that was in Nov 1917.

I think some MLs don't really disagree with the idea of a dominating and exploiting class, they just want to be a part of it.

Concentration and power and elite status are necessary for capitalism but they are not sufficient from capitalism. They don't make a class. Class is made by a defined relationship to the means of production, and that definition means a specific organization of property, derived from a unique historical organization of labor.

The Soviet bureaucracy, the elite, the "concentrated" did not form a class by that, admittedly Marxist, definition. The bureaucracy had no essential organization of property unique to itself, and necessary to the development of the means of production. On the contrary, the bureaucracy develops precisely because it has no such unique characteristic, but reflects instead the conflicts and antagonisms of the Soviet economy-- the split between city and countryside, the lack of agricultural productivity, and most importantly the retreat of the revolutionary wave in other countries.

The issues are sufficiently exposed, analysis, in the discussion of either or both the fSU's accomplishments, or its failures. It is upon the unity of the accomplishment and failures that we need to concentrate.

For example, it's inadequate, incomplete, to concentrate on the Soviet victory over the Nazi military forces in WW2 as great an accomplishment as that is, without looking at the events, programs, tactics, and failures endorsed by the 3rd International that, more or less, gave capitalism the "space" to ignite the war. And it's inadequate to consider that victory, without considering the legacy of that victory, the tremendous damage to the fSU economy, from which, IMO, it never recovered prior to its total collapse.

At the same time it makes little sense to me to denounce the fSU as "state capitalist," applying that terms as a moral condemnation without examining the material conditions that required both a state, and that particular state, to act analogously to a capitalist state, with a bureaucracy acting in part analogously to the bourgeoisie.

To say the "dominating and exploiting class came directly out of Lenin" is, besides assuming what hasn't been proven--that the bureaucracy is a class--, is to discount the international and domestic economic relations in Russia before during and after the revolution.

[syndicat]

Concentration and power and elite status are necessary for capitalism but they are not sufficient from capitalism. They don't make a class. Class is made by a defined relationship to the means of production, and that definition means a specific organization of property, derived from a unique historical organization of labor.


Nope. Class is a social relationship of power, of power over the immediate producers. the particular nature of a ruling class depends on what the nature of that relation is, that is, it depends on the "social relations of production."

You had a country where the elite controlled all decision making, were the bosses over workers day to day, managed large plants and industries, had the police at their beck and call to exert violence against any attempt at independent worker self-organization. to not admit this was a ruling class iis to not face the obvious facts...and it won't convince anyone. it has the smell of religious dogma.

under capitalism capital is a relation not just to the means of production. capital possessors can go out into markets for "factors of production" and obtain all they need to run production...hire managers and workers and experts, rent or buy land, buildings, machines, set policies for their managers to control workers, and they own the revenue from the sale of the product. so in that relationship you have power over workers and over managers. so you have right there the class relations. Class relations are social relations, relations over people. That's because class is a relation between groups. that's why we speak of "class antagonism" and "class struggle."

There is no reason that dominating class has to be based on private ownership of assets. All it needs is a way to control production, control the immediate producers, control the output. In the USSR the ruling class did this collectively through the state and the various managerial hierarchies.

Otherwise you can't really explain why there was a revolution. Whose revolution was it in 1988-92? Various elements of the elite class in the USSR came to the conclusion they'd be better off if they could privatize gains. They looked with envy at their counterparts in western Europe. It was the bureaucratic class that engineered a revolution, to convert themselves into a capitalist class....although of course only some of them attained that status. It was indeed a revolution from above.

the capitalist class in capitalist societies is based on a relative monopoly of ownership of productive assets. but a bureaucratic class is based on a relative monopoly over decision making authority and key kinds of expertise important to managerial decision making and planning. a different base of class power, just as the feudal elite had a different basis of their class power than the capitalists.

[S.Artesian]

Nope. Class is a social relationship of power, of power over the immediate producers. the particular nature of a ruling class depends on what the nature of that relation is, that is, it depends on the "social relations of production."

You had a country where the elite controlled all decision making, were the bosses over workers day to day, managed large plants and industries, had the police at their beck and call to exert violence against any attempt at independent worker self-organization. to not admit this was a ruling class iis to not face the obvious facts...and it won't convince anyone. it has the smell of religious dogma.

under capitalism capital is a relation not just to the means of production. capital possessors can go out into markets for "factors of production" and obtain all they need to run production...hire managers and workers and experts, rent or buy land, buildings, machines, set policies for their managers to control workers, and they own the revenue from the sale of the product. so in that relationship you have power over workers and over managers. so you have right there the class relations. Class relations are social relations, relations over people. That's because class is a relation between groups. that's why we speak of "class antagonism" and "class struggle."

There is no reason that dominating class has to be based on private ownership of assets. All it needs is a way to control production, control the immediate producers, control the output. In the USSR the ruling class did this collectively through the state and the various managerial hierarchies.

Otherwise you can't really explain why there was a revolution. Whose revolution was it in 1988-92? Various elements of the elite class in the USSR came to the conclusion they'd be better off if they could privatize gains. They looked with envy at their counterparts in western Europe. It was the bureaucratic class that engineered a revolution, to convert themselves into a capitalist class....although of course only some of them attained that status. It was indeed a revolution from above.

the capitalist class in capitalist societies is based on a relative monopoly of ownership of productive assets. but a bureaucratic class is based on a relative monopoly over decision making authority and key kinds of expertise important to managerial decision making and planning. a different base of class power, just as the feudal elite had a different basis of their class power than the capitalists.

I'll see your nope and raise you a no-way. Classes don't just come about out of thin air; they don't just come by their power out of a shared will; hell they don't even exist as a class, with any shared, coherent interest without that material connection to production, to the organization of labor.

The social relations of production are those relations mediated by and made manifest in the organization of property, and the social organization of labor.

If the bureaucracy was an independent class, then it would not simply have existed as a bureaucracy. It would have existed outside and over its police power, its gang-boss function.

The bureaucracy would have, would have been compelled to manipulate production for its own enrichment. You can say what you want about privilege and elite status, but nothing the bureaucracy did shows it manipulating the economy for the sole purpose of its own enrichment, for the purpose of its reproduction as a class.

All those things you describe the capitalist class doing, which make up your notion of the social relations of production, are possible only because of the ownership of the means of production by the bourgeoisie; possible only because of private property; possible only because the economy of the bourgeoisie exists for no other reason than the accumulation of value.

And that's one more thing that didn't occur in the fSU-- production for the purpose of accumulating exchange value.

Doesn't make fSU by any measure socialist, doesn't make it utopia, but it does mean the bureaucracy was not a class, and the fSU was not capitalist.

Not all classes have to be "grounded" in the private ownership of assets, but a capitalist class does have to be so grounded, even if in its infancy and/or dotage, it pawns off those endeavors requiring high initial outlays for fixed capital to the state.

The proletariat can be the ruling class in society without being grounded in private ownership, because the organization of labor when the proletariat is that ruling class is directly, immediately, social-- because accumulation is for need, use, not profit.

Whose revolution was it in 1988-1992? Firstly, it was a counterrevolution based in the erosion and collapse of the economy due to the very inability of the bureaucracy to substitute itself for a class. Secondly, this counterrevolution did not occur from the bureaucracy reproducing itself as a class, but from the pressure of international capitalism, of the world markets on the Soviet economy. Thirdly, the counterrevolution was not about accumulating the means of production in the fSU, but about destroying them; about taking that productive capacity out of the economy, and making the fSU dependent upon the world markets, upon the reproduction of exchange value that would realize profit in those markets.


If profit was the class-conscious goal of the bureaucratic class, then we would see accumulation of value, of the representation of value by the bureaucracy, and that cannot occur separate and apart from the accumulation of private property in the means of production.

It took the collapse of the fSU, the completely breakdown of the bureaucracy to secure that bit of retrogression for international capitalism.

[syndicat]

The social relations of production are those relations mediated by and made manifest in the organization of property, and the social organization of labor.

If the bureaucracy was an independent class, then it would not simply have existed as a bureaucracy. It would have existed outside and over its police power, its gang-boss function.


It most certainly did exist as a class in production. this is the role of taylorism and education in the USSR, as part of the means of reproduction of this class. that is, jobs and production are re-organized so as to concentrate the planning and coordination and decision-making function into their hands, and out of the hands of workers. workers certainly did not control production.

in the USSR education was the means to gain a position in the bureaucratic class...just as it is, for that matter in the bureaucratic class in the USA. the distinction is that the bureaucratic class in the USSR was not subordinate to a class based on private wealth accumulation.

but there is no reason you cannot have a class that is based on shared power. and they did avail themselves of their power to gain much higher wages and various perks such as special stores.


Not all classes have to be "grounded" in the private ownership of assets, but a capitalist class does have to be so grounded, even if in its infancy and/or dotage, it pawns off those endeavors requiring high initial outlays for fixed capital to the state.


yes, and the ruling class in the USSR was not a capitalist class but a bureaucratic class. that's why a revolution was necessary to revert to capitalism.

moreover, I didn't say that private profit was their goal. you seem to be not paying attention to what i said.

[S.Artesian]

It most certainly did exist as a class in production. this is the role of taylorism and education in the USSR, as part of the means of reproduction of this class. that is, jobs and production are re-organized so as to concentrate the planning and coordination and decision-making function into their hands, and out of the hands of workers. workers certainly did not control production.

in the USSR education was the means to gain a position in the bureaucratic class...just as it is, for that matter in the bureaucratic class in the USA. the distinction is that the bureaucratic class in the USSR was not subordinate to a class based on private wealth accumulation.

but there is no reason you cannot have a class that is based on shared power. and they did avail themselves of their power to gain much higher wages and various perks such as special stores.



yes, and the ruling class in the USSR was not a capitalist class but a bureaucratic class. that's why a revolution was necessary to revert to capitalism.

moreover, I didn't say that private profit was their goal. you seem to be not paying attention to what i said.


So what was the motive of this "new class"? How did it accumulate? And what was its "product"? Did it produce commodities? Exchange values? What and how did this new class with its new relation to [new?]property appropriate wealth?

If it didn't produce for profit, then what did it produce for? And if it produced for use... then how could it do that as a class?

I'm paying attention all right. I just don't think you've thought through the meanings and implications of your claims.

[syndicat]

So what was the motive of this "new class"? How did it accumulate? And what was its "product"? Did it produce commodities? Exchange values? What and how did this new class with its new relation to [new?]property appropriate wealth?


Accumulation occurred by keeping down wages. in the '30s under the Five Year Plans there was, first off, a massive campaign to put party members through university to fill out the engineering and management positions. there was no concern to ensure ordinary workers had such education. rapid growth was possible because of the primitive accumulation of that era. peasants had had control over their own work, and didn't work unless they could get good enough prices for their commodities. this was changed with the land being taken over by the state or in some cases collective farms and a forced march to higher productivity at the cost of lower consumption for them. wages of ordinary workers often suffered in that era. heavy investment requires a shift of resources from consumption to investment. this was imposed by the bureaucracy. so the collective bureaucracy was collectively accumulating a massive increase in productive capacity, via building up heavy industry, particularly related to military production.

the bureaucratic class is motivated by their power and control, the society being their collective venture, as well as the perks and privileges of their position in material terms.

[Robocommie]

Accumulation occurred by keeping down wages. in the '30s under the Five Year Plans there was, first off, a massive campaign to put party members through university to fill out the engineering and management positions. there was no concern to ensure ordinary workers had such education. rapid growth was possible because of the primitive accumulation of that era. peasants had had control over their own work, and didn't work unless they could get good enough prices for their commodities. this was changed with the land being taken over by the state or in some cases collective farms and a forced march to higher productivity at the cost of lower consumption for them. wages of ordinary workers often suffered in that era. heavy investment requires a shift of resources from consumption to investment. this was imposed by the bureaucracy. so the collective bureaucracy was collectively accumulating a massive increase in productive capacity, via building up heavy industry, particularly related to military production.

the bureaucratic class is motivated by their power and control, the society being their collective venture, as well as the perks and privileges of their position in material terms.

I have to say my recent studies on this subject leads me to concur. The achievements in the Five Year Plans were incredible, but they were achieved oftentimes by underpaying the collectivized farm laborers, selling the agricultural produce at higher prices, and using the money gathered from the difference to industrialize the nation.

It had a material benefit to the country at large but one has to question whether it's just to do so on the backs of the peasantry. In particular, I have to say it does very little to resolve the contradiction between town and country.

[robbo203]

yes, and the ruling class in the USSR was not a capitalist class but a bureaucratic class. that's why a revolution was necessary to revert to capitalism.
.

I disagree. The ruling class was a capitalist class in that its relationship to capital was one of ownership and control. Here is where the difference with western forms of capitalism was apparent. There was no de jure individual entitlement to capital. But this is not a crucial defining feature of the capitalist class. The catholic church in feudal times had huge landholdings throughout europe. Individual clerics did not have private ownership of this land or indeed the nascent industrial enterprises attached to many monastries. Class ownership was exercised collectively by the church hierarchy

In precisely the same way in the Soviet Union, class ownership of the means of production was exercised via the the control that a tiny elite of nomenklatura had over the state and the distribution of the social product. Indeed, taking into account both their inflated "salaries" as well the numerous perks enjoyed by the eilite, Roy Medvedev (Khrushchev: The Years in Power ,Columbia University Press. 1976, 540) has calculated the ratio between high and low earners was something like 1:100. I might add that in the post war years there were increasing connections between the Soviet elite and the so called underground economy and the Soviet mafia. This would have provided an additional illegal source of income for the corrupt elements of the red bourgeoisie

I dont think we can dispute there was a ruling class in the Soviet Union. The question is - what was the nature of the Soviet ecnomy itself. From a marxian standpoint, at least, it was clearly a capitalist economy albeit run by the state. It exhibited all of the primary features that indicate capitalism - generalised commodity production (not only in respect oif consumer goods but in respect of capital as the relationship between state enterrpises was a buying and selling one involing legal contracts), universal wage labour (indicating the separation of the producers/workers from the means of production), the pursuit of profit (state enterprses were obliged to pursue accounting profits and though they did not necessarily go out of business if they did not realise profit they could still be penalised) and of course capital accumulation (which enabled the Soviet Union to embark on its industrialisation programme).

These things are the hallmarks of capitalism. Their presence points to the existence of capitalism. It is absurd to argue that a ruling class operating in a capitalist context is not a capitalist class. The form may be different from that which is to be found in the West but the content was effectively the same.

[S.Artesian]

I have to say my recent studies on this subject leads me to concur. The achievements in the Five Year Plans were incredible, but they were achieved oftentimes by underpaying the collectivized farm laborers, selling the agricultural produce at higher prices, and using the money gathered from the difference to industrialize the nation.

It had a material benefit to the country at large but one has to question whether it's just to do so on the backs of the peasantry. In particular, I have to say it does very little to resolve the contradiction between town and country.

No doubt about it, the first five year plans were based on reducing consumption, and, in fact, declining productivity...although the gap between state prices paid to farmers and the official prices at which foodstuffs was made available to urban populations was not the primary source of accumulation. Taxes-in-kind, higher prices for agricultural inputs while keeping final product prices low were the drivers of that accumulation.

But that accumulation was not the wealth accumulation for the bureaucracy as a class. In this regard, the characterization of the fSU as "state capitalism" is a bit more accurate, although it a better formulation is a "state acting as a proxy for capitalism," which of course leads us to the real question-- on what class is that state based? The bourgeoisie were expropriated, as a class, by the proletariat as a class. Doesn't make Russia heaven on earth; doesn't resolve the contradiction between city and countryside; does require we recognize the class basis of the revolution that did occur, and the different property organization-- deformities, distortions "warts and all."

Where in the schema offered by Syndicat is the accumulation of the bureaucracy as a class, as a class owning the means of production for its own accumulation of wealth? It quite simply doesn't exist.

Look at the bourgeoisie anywhere and everywhere in the world? Does that class own, operate, manage, the means of production without regard for its personal accumulation? Without the ability to own, sell, exchange, inherit, bequeath those means of production?

Could the bureaucracy as a class, that is to say as individual members of that class do anything like that? Obviously not. And if we say that the bureaucracy did not require that, did not need to do that, but could in fact own the means of production collectively, organize it collectively, direct production for itself collectively, what we're doing is attributing to the bureaucracy as a class the characteristics of the proletariat once it has seized control of the means of production. And so then we must ask, why did the bureaucracy's grip fail. Why could the bureaucracy not overcome the conflicts in the economy?

It, the notion of the bureaucracy as a new class, simply doesn't have wings. If it did have wings then, like a frog, it wouldn't bump its ass on the ground. But bump its ass and hard it did as its existence was the legacy of the lack of material development in Russia prior to the revolution, the toll taken on the working class during the civil war, and the failure of revolution internationally, a failure attributable directly to the strategy and policies of the 3rd International.

[S.Artesian]

I disagree. The ruling class was a capitalist class in that its relationship to capital was one of ownership and control. Here is where the difference with western forms of capitalism was apparent. There was no de jure individual entitlement to capital. But this is not a crucial defining feature of the capitalist class. The catholic church in feudal times had huge landholdings throughout europe. Individual clerics did not have private ownership of this land or indeed the nascent industrial enterprises attached to many monastries. Class ownership was exercised collectively by the church hierarchy

In precisely the same way in the Soviet Union, class ownership of the means of production was exercised via the the control that a tiny elite of nomenklatura had over the state and the distribution of the social product. Indeed, taking into account both their inflated "salaries" as well the numerous perks enjoyed by the eilite, Roy Medvedev (Khrushchev: The Years in Power ,Columbia University Press. 1976, 540) has calculated the ratio between high and low earners was something like 1:100. I might add that in the post war years there were increasing connections between the Soviet elite and the so called underground economy and the Soviet mafia. This would have provided an additional illegal source of income for the corrupt elements of the red bourgeoisie

I dont think we can dispute there was a ruling class in the Soviet Union. The question is - what was the nature of the Soviet ecnomy itself. From a marxian standpoint, at least, it was clearly a capitalist economy albeit run by the state. It exhibited all of the primary features that indicate capitalism - generalised commodity production (not only in respect oif consumer goods but in respect of capital as the relationship between state enterrpises was a buying and selling one involing legal contracts), universal wage labour (indicating the separation of the producers/workers from the means of production), the pursuit of profit (state enterprses were obliged to pursue accounting profits and though they did not necessarily go out of business if they did not realise profit they could still be penalised) and of course capital accumulation (which enabled the Soviet Union to embark on its industrialisation programme).

These things are the hallmarks of capitalism. Their presence points to the existence of capitalism. It is absurd to argue that a ruling class operating in a capitalist context is not a capitalist class. The form may be different from that which is to be found in the West but the content was effectively the same.



Comrade robbo203 says that individual ownership of the means of production is not essential to "western capitalism," and then as evidence of this non-essentiality he provides the example of the Catholic Church in feudal Europe. The Catholic Church was/is just that-- a church and not the capitalist class, and feudal Europe was, again, just that, feudal not capitalist.

'nuff said.

[syndicat]

The ruling class was a capitalist class in that its relationship to capital was one of ownership and control. Here is where the difference with western forms of capitalism was apparent. There was no de jure individual entitlement to capital. But this is not a crucial defining feature of the capitalist class. The catholic church in feudal times had huge landholdings throughout europe. Individual clerics did not have private ownership of this land or indeed the nascent industrial enterprises attached to many monastries. Class ownership was exercised collectively by the church hierarchy


uh, you're talking about the church bureaucracy in a non-capitalist mode of production. this actually supports what I was saying.

[robbo203]

Comrade robbo203 says that individual ownership of the means of production is not essential to "western capitalism," and then as evidence of this non-essentiality he provides the example of the Catholic Church in feudal Europe. The Catholic Church was/is just that-- a church and not the capitalist class, and feudal Europe was, again, just that, feudal not capitalist.

'nuff said.

I didnt say say what you said I said. Actually I said something quite different. Legal or de jure ownership of capital by individuals is more commonly associated with western style capitalism but is not essential to capitalism per se. Capitalism can operate without it as was the case with the state capitalism of the Soviet Union.

Also, both you and Syndicat have completely missed the point about the Catholic Church. I was not trying to argue that in feudalism the Catholiic Church hierarchy was a "capitalist class". What I was was saying rather was that it is possible to exercise sectional/class ownership of the means of production without individual legal entitlement and the Church hierarchy was a very good example of this. The same was the case in the Soviet Union except that here (unlike with the church in feudal Europe )you had capitalism or, to be more precise, a variant of capitalism called state capitalism which meant that the ruling class in this case had to be a de facto capitalist class despite the absence of de jure individual ownership of capital normally associated with western style capitalism.
My point is simply that if you accept there was capitalism in the Soviet Union and I explained why this had to be the case, then logically you have to accept there was a capitalist class. Capitalism without a capitalist class is an absurdity.

[S.Artesian]

I didnt say say what you said I said. Actually I said something quite different. Legal or de jure ownership of capital by individuals is more commonly associated with western style capitalism but is not essential to capitalism per se. Capitalism can operate without it as was the case with the state capitalism of the Soviet Union.

Also, both you and Syndicat have completely missed the point about the Catholic Church. I was not trying to argue that in feudalism the Catholiic Church hierarchy was a "capitalist class". What I was was saying rather was that it is possible to exercise sectional/class ownership of the means of production without individual legal entitlement and the Church hierarchy was a very good example of this. The same was the case in the Soviet Union except that here (unlike with the church in feudal Europe )you had capitalism or, to be more precise, a variant of capitalism called state capitalism which meant that the ruling class in this case had to be a de facto capitalist class despite the absence of de jure individual ownership of capital normally associated with western style capitalism.
My point is simply that if you accept there was capitalism in the Soviet Union and I explained why this had to be the case, then logically you have to accept there was a capitalist class. Capitalism without a capitalist class is an absurdity.


Whatever you think you were trying to say, here's what you did say:

." There was no de jure individual entitlement to capital. But this is not a crucial defining feature of the capitalist class. But this is not a crucial defining feature of the capitalist class. The catholic church in feudal times had huge landholdings throughout europe. Individual clerics did not have private ownership of this land or indeed the nascent industrial enterprises attached to many monastries. Class ownership was exercised collectively by the church hierarchy"


You said that individual entitlement is not a crucial defining feature to the capitalist class, and then you "buttress" that "argument" by pointing to the catholic church, the hierarchy of which was not a class in and to itself, and you point to its landholdings during the feudal era. I was scratching my head thinking, "What's wrong with these statements..." when the answer came to me... "Everything!"

I missed the point? Not hardly. You missed the point. The capitalist class specifically does require personal accumulation, personal control of the means of production, private ownership of the means of production. It cannot and does not accumulate through direct socially managed production. If it did, it wouldn't be the bourgeoisie and there wouldn't be capitalism. Not even during the most rigorous periods of state control-- fascism in Germany, the War planning boards that tookover railroads in the US during WW1, was private ownership abolished and were the means of production operated on a collective basis.

Yes, I agree, capitalism without a capitalist class is an oxymoron, an impossibility, which is why I don't think the fSU was capitalist, "state" or private.

[robbo203]

Whatever you think you were trying to say, here's what you did say:

." There was no de jure individual entitlement to capital. But this is not a crucial defining feature of the capitalist class. But this is not a crucial defining feature of the capitalist class. The catholic church in feudal times had huge landholdings throughout europe. Individual clerics did not have private ownership of this land or indeed the nascent industrial enterprises attached to many monastries. Class ownership was exercised collectively by the church hierarchy"


You said that individual entitlement is not a crucial defining feature to the capitalist class, and then you "buttress" that "argument" by pointing to the catholic church, the hierarchy of which was not a class in and to itself, and you point to its landholdings during the feudal era. I was scratching my head thinking, "What's wrong with these statements..." when the answer came to me... "Everything!"

I missed the point? Not hardly. You missed the point. The capitalist class specifically does require personal accumulation, personal control of the means of production, private ownership of the means of production. It cannot and does not accumulate through direct socially managed production. If it did, it wouldn't be the bourgeoisie and there wouldn't be capitalism. Not even during the most rigorous periods of state control-- fascism in Germany, the War planning boards that tookover railroads in the US during WW1, was private ownership abolished and were the means of production operated on a collective basis.

Yes, I agree, capitalism without a capitalist class is an oxymoron, an impossibility, which is why I don't think the fSU was capitalist, "state" or private.

OK I can see where you are coming from now but my argument was essentially in two parts

Firstly sectional or class ownership does not have to involve legal or re jure ownership of the means of production

Secondly. the nature of the class that owns the means of production is determined by the nature of the system. The Soviet Union exhibited all of the primary features of capitalism which I earlier listed (de jure ownership of capital is not a primary feature).

Ergo, the ruling class who exercise de facto ownerhip of the means of production via their strangehold on the state constituted the ruling capitalist class in the Soviet Union

[S.Artesian]

I understand your points and I disagree.

Class ownership, as long as ownership and not utilization, is the descriptor requires exactly that, some sort of legal titles to ownership.

Secondly the ownership of the means of production is what determines class, and the nature of that class. The "system" as an abstraction doesn't determine anything.

I don't know what you regard as the primary features of capitalism, but for Marx they were clearly private ownership of the means of production, private accumulation of wealth in the private accumulation of the means of production as capital, production for exchange, production for the accumulation of value. I don't believe the fSU exhibited those characteristics at the core of its organization of labor and property.

Your last statement is simply a tautology... the ruling class who... constituted the ruling class. Again, you're assuming what is in dispute-- that the bureaucracy was in fact a class.

[syndicat]

to robbo203: you're mistakenly assuming you can suppose that prices are created via markets as in capitalism in the USSR. but they weren't. so "profit" and "wage" don't have the same meaning. Prices were set in advance of production by the planning board. Prices of consumer goods were priced below costs. Thus, when they ended the old system, prices went way up and people were greatly impoverished. Of course there had been the cost of standing in line. When market prices were introduced, no more lines.

for "capital" to exist, the possessors of this power have to be able to go out into markets for factors of production, and buy or rent the factors -- hire workers and managers, rent or buy land, buildings, equipment, and they have authority over the production process via the accountability of the managerial bureaucracy to them, and they accrue any surpluses of revenue over expenses.

but in the USSR you didn't have private possessors of capital in this sense. You didn't have "factor markets" in which capital possessors could go and acquire the factors, and then autonomously organize production.

It's not an accidental feature of capitalism that it is a relatively uncoordinated system of autonomous capital possessors or "capitals".

on the other hand, it wasn't an authentic socialism either because that would assume collective management by workers of production and direct collective accountability of production. State bureaucratic control and ownership is still a class system, a system of exploitation. It's just not capitalism.